I’m sitting here trying to figure out just what to do with the rest of the year. I have a novel to complete, several others started in my head and on paper, a wedding dress and two separate outfits to make, and I’m now secretary for two separate organizations. Just how do I juggle those two jobs, the day care, my family here in Texas and the one in Montana, with everything else happening? I also want to lose weight. Where do I start? Well, as Grandma always says start at the beginning.
The only way I will ever accomplish a thing this year is working with others. My critique group is a wonderful group of ladies working for the common goal . . . getting published. I’ll work at being secretary of the Heart of Texas/RWA chapter and the Brazos Neighborhood Association on different days. My family being family will just butt in anytime they want something, so I don’t think I’ll even worry about them very much. They get most of my attention anyway. Nevertheless, if I tell them I’m working on my story, most of the time they back off and wait for me to come up for air. The day care, well, it gives me the paycheck to pay the light bill, to run my computer, so I’ll do that at least five days each week. Well that leaves the weight loss. Oh well . . . Sounds like I have team work going for me already. I may survive the next couple of months.
This is a time to renew commitments, to look to the future and set goals. Decide now what you want to accomplish today, this month, this quarter, or even this year. Then write it down and give it to someone at our next meeting. This doesn’t need to be someone in your critique group. You will need to pick someone you haven’t worked with or at least haven’t worked with very much. A written commitment given to another person is harder to break than one you make to yourself. Try exchanging phone numbers, and call when you need a shoulder to cry on, or when you need to talk out an action point, or a turning point. Working together we can go the distance.
We have a very talented chapter. I’m not sure of the correct count, but we have several different members sending entries to the Golden Heart contest. What a feather in our cap should all of the entries do well. Well then, sit back and think this out. What if you had helped them in a difficult scene, or encouraged them when they were down, what if an idea of yours was used and it helped them win? It isn’t just their winning the contest. You had a hand in it also. This is teamwork. Children do this automatically and do it wonderfully. As we grow up, we seem to let things into our lives--envy, ambition, greed, under confidence, over confidence. These all get in the way and can ruin relationships. We don’t need this getting in the way of our goals. Our chapter is only as strong as our weakest link. Nevertheless, by working together as a unit there is no weak link.
We have a team in place already, accessible and willing to work and aid each other when and where needed. Women working together, wow . . . and they say man made the world . . . ?
Once upon a time, when the world was new and the Dallas Cowboys were still "America’s Team", I stood on the same playing field--right down there with my shoes turning green on the Astroturf--as Lee Roy Jordan, a man some claim to be the best middle linebacker ever to have played the game of football.
Now, admittedly, he was returning from the locker room after halftime in this preseason game in the fall of 1972, whereas I was on the opposite side of the field in the middle of the Baylor University marching band, hustling off the field as fast as my not-so-little feet would carry me. Mostly, I remember praying that my big fuzzy British guards bear hat would not slide down and swallow up my entire head because, just before the show started, I’d been foolish enough to untie the thingee inside that was intended to prevent it. I remember my eyes being at belt-buckle level with most of the Philadelphia Eagles we marched between on the sideline (and I have never been short). And it was at the dinner afterwards, that I met for the very first time the man I have now been married to for mumbledy-something years.
Recently, Lee Roy Jordan and I again shared the same space. This time, I was sitting at the Hill College table at the Hillsboro Chamber of Commerce banquet, and he was the featured speaker at said banquet. Mr. Jordan said something in his talk that I hope stays with me as long as my esteemed spouse has, and another dozen years beyond.
Someone asked him what he learned from the coaches he’d played with that made the biggest impression on him. Jordan replied that Coach Paul Bryant of the University of Alabama had taught him to strive for improvement at every moment.
"Don’t aim for improving twenty per cent by next month, or 100 per cent next year," Jordan said. "Try to get just one per cent better today. And another one per cent better tomorrow. If you get one per cent better every single day, just think where you’ll be a year from now."
That thought hit me like an open-field tackle from a world-class football player.
If I get one per cent better at writing every day, by next year, I won’t be just 365 per cent better, because each improvement builds on the improvement that’s come before. The growth becomes exponential.
So, sprawled flat on my back on that mental football field, I set a new goal. I refuse to write "good enough." I am going to write better. And better and better and better. Each time I sit down to write, I resolve to dig a little deeper, to cut that vein a little wider and make the words that much more true. I want to make you laugh and cry and whimper when you read what I’ve written. And if I improve that little bit every day, nobody will be able to hold me back.
Get ready, girlfriends, I am going to knock your socks off.
Why don’t you join me?
First Person = usually narrative, like reading a diary. "I am aware of the thumping tattoo of rain and hail beating on the roof as I watch the blood ooze from Lazlo’s body. I can smell the acrid odor of my own fear. I know that my days are numbered." As you can see, the reader participates in the feelings of the narrator because what happens is happening to "me," "I."
If you are writing a gothic romance or straight mystery then you need to understand the use of First Person Narrative. This point of view allows the writer to weave a web of intrigue that pulls ever tighter around the reader’s imagination because we see only one point of view. We don’t know what others are thinking, planning, dreaming. We can’t know what what motivates anyone but the narrator. If we are to make the reader a partner in this adventure so that he/she doesn’t feel cheated, then reader must know everything the story teller knows at any particular time in the story.
Two excellent examples out of many authors who use this point of view in the mystery or detective genre are Dashiel Hammett and Sue Grafton who both excel in this form of writing. A very well written, love story composed in the first person is ALL THE WINTERS THAT HAVE BEEN by Evan Maxwell (1995 Harper Collins). This was such a strong read that I didn’t want this book to end. It became a CBS movie about "love lost...and found" starring Richard Chamberlain, Karen Allen and Hal Holbrook.
The most important thing to remember when working in this point of view is if your hero/heroine can’t see, hear, smell, feel or touch it in the scene you are writing, neither can you the writer or the reader. There is only one point of view. You may not get into anyone else’s mind.
First person can narrate the past and present, and even the future because the story is being told after the fact. You, the writer can suck the reader into this narration and hold them until the last word hits the page.
Second Person Point of View = Me talking to you. I’ve only read one second person novel. I found it hard to read and very disappointing. And I haven’t seen one in years, but then I’ve gone out of my way not to find or read another one.
Omniscient Point of View = total overview in the third person voice, can see everything that is going on, God’s view point or the big eye in the sky. Usually used at the beginning of a chapter or the prologue to set up the reader as to who, what, where, when or why that may not otherwise be plain to the reader. Elizabeth Lowell uses the omniscient view with finesse to introduce the hero (alpha male) in TELL ME NO LIES (Mira 1986).
Chapter One
Catlin barely controlled a sound of disbelief. Adrenaline poured through him, ripping away the comforts of the present, revealing the bones of the past when a woman had taught him the true meaning of betrayal. The lesson would have cost his life if it had not been for the speed of another man. The woman had died. The other man had died. The man known then as Jacques-Pierre Rousseau had lived.
From this omniscient point of view, we know we are going to be dealing with a reluctant hero. We also know, because it is a romance, that somewhere deep in his soul, Catlin needs to feel redemption. Enter the innocent heroine who doesn’t know she’s being used by both the good and bad guys at every turn.
Third Person Multiple View Point = This is what we use today in most of our popular fiction writing. Romance writing works best in this point of view. Ordinarily, the reader should see every scene through the eyes of one of the characters in that scene. However, those two, three or more people, while in that scene, cannot know what is going on across town or even next door.
And we show what is happening through the caracter’s actions and the dialog between the people in that scene. It takes a very experienced writer to pull off being in more than one head per scene (and editors usually frown on it in series writing). Mainstream editors love it when it works. Third person uses he, she, his, hers, theirs. "I" is used in dialogue or italicized inner talk.
View Point’s Unbreakable Rule
NEVER CONFUSE THE READER!
